Europe's oldest woman dies in France at 114: retirement home

The French and European eldest citizen Marie-Therese Bardet is seen as she celebrates her 114th anniversary with her family at the rest-home "La Chataigneraie" in France on June 2. She died days later

The oldest known woman in Europe, French national Marie-Therese Bardet, died Friday days after celebrating her 114th birthday, her retirement home in the western village of Pontchateau said.

Bardet, whose birthday was June 2, was the sixth oldest person in the world, according to the US-based Gerontology Research Group (GRG), which compiles birth certificates of people aged over 110 years.

There is no official international organisation that provides statistics on "supercentenarians", but the GRG says that it now has 70 of them on its books, with 115-year-old American Besse Cooper at the top of the list.

The GRG lists cover the Americas, Europe, Australia and Japan, but do not include Russia, China or African states.